Mektepdeyken bana boyle (GS hakkinda) projeler verselerdi herhalde sinifin birincisi olurdum
Neyse uzunca yazilmis bu calismayi ozellikle "globalization" ile ilgilenlerle paylasmak istedim...
Playing with Global City: The Rise and Fall of a Turkish Soccer Team
Emrence, Cem
1 August 2007
Journal of Popular Culture
GALATASARAY, ONE OF THE OLDEST SPORT CLUBS IN TURKEY, ACHIEVED a colossal success in European soccer in 2000 by winning the UEFA Cup, the second prestigious cup on the continent.1 A Turkish team that belongs to a semiperipheral country with an ambiguous European identity succeeded in this enormous task in the midst of a great surprise. This article will argue that spatial and social inequalities in Turkey that accelerated with globalization were crucial for the team's success in Europe. Hence, Istanbul, which has been emerging as a global city for the last two decades, provided the material and ideological elements to be mobilized in such a project.
Articulated in different terms, the discussion here will be limited to exploring the economic and social aspects of this "success story" within a political economy framework, leaving the input of luck, team management, and fans' contribution along with the historical legacy of the team out of the scope of this article. As such, this article proposes three major points. First, as certain cities have become nodes in the new spatial setting of the global economy, the club management of Galatasaray exploited the position of Istanbul as a financial center, borrowing heavily from globally connected local banks to finance the building of a strong squad that put the team on an equal ground with its European rivals.
Second, Galatasaray sided with "winners" logic in the city. In an urban space divided along the lines of social exclusion and economic inequality, the club allied itself with business people in club management and created a class of privileged fans by commodifying the game on and off the field. Finally, as the profile of fans has been transformed in the stadium toward the economically powerful classes, the representation of the team and the discourse around its European competition radically changed. Hence, the European adventure of Galatasaray in 1999-2000 became the ultimate arena to voice the aspirations of upper classes to be part of Europe (a Union) as the team was expected to prove to Europeans on the pitch that the "Turks" should be accepted as equals and even a "key" member in the European family (Kozanoglu 119-22; Stokes 11).
Financial Gains
One of the leading scholars in the global city debate, Saskia Sassen, summarized the role of global cities in the contemporary economic order: "they have become strategic places that concentrate command functions, global markets and production sites for the advanced corporate service industries" (Sassen 139-44). Hence, responding to the demands of (global) capital, global cities recently evolved into important centers for financial services, host headquarters of multinational corporations and have become the largest consuming sites of differentiated consumption patterns. As such, they acquired a "postnational" character where production, distribution and consumption cycles are no more organized along the national lines.
Yet, not all cities on the world map are "first-rate global" such as New York, London and Tokyo. While the global hierarchy of cities relegated most of them to a dysfunctional position with globalization, the remaining few, which are torn between the logic of global and local, appeared on the world scene as a distinct urban formation. Mostly named the second-rate global cities, they are nodal points in transmitting economic, human and cultural inflows to the local from the global. However, the connection is not a two-way street. Calling them mega-cities, Manuel Castells argues that while connecting people and commodities to global networks, these places are "disconnected" from the local (Castells 436-40).
Operating within this network, Istanbul has emerged as a strong bidder for a second-rate global city position in the last two decades. Historically speaking, the city had been an economic and political center for centuries (Inalcik). Furthermore, located at the junction point of Europe, Balkans, Caucasus, and the Middle East, it is a strategic site for conducting business, receiving human flows, and organizing global cultural events. This favorable background proved effective during the 1990s when both global and local forces challenged nation-state's economic, political and cultural sovereignty within its borders, paving the way to the rise of Istanbul vis-à-vis the political center (Ankara) in the country as well as within the regional world economy (Aksoy and Robins, Peripheral 75-80).
In concrete terms, the economic rise of the city stemmed from a set of factors. First, various infrastructure investments have been made to host the global capital. This was especially visible in transportation sector and telecommunication technologies as the largest airport of the Balkan region was constructed along with many five-star hotels, shopping malls, and super highways. Furthermore, a strong telecommunications network came into being to connect the city to the rest of the globe (Zürcher 315-24).
Likewise, a variety of financial instruments were created to support financial networks and serve capital owners: financial rating agencies, banks, a speculative stock exchange, law and accounting firms are among the examples to count (Keyder, Istanbul 19). Meanwhile, a few multinational corporations chose Istanbul as a regional headquarter and the larger Marmara region as a production site because of their closeness to European markets and favorable working conditions to capital (Onis, Liberalization 97-105).
Large amounts of capital poured into the city through other ways as well. Specifically, favorable economic conditions in the world economy at the time helped the Turkish banks that are concentrated in Istanbul to borrow short-term credit from international markets and assist speculative short-term foreign capital inflows for domestic and regional operations (Onis, Globalization 9-11). On the other side of the coin was the Turkish state that borrowed heavily from these commercial banks with high interest rates (Yeldan 58-61, 124-57). Serving the interests of the banks as well as the global financial capital, both financial developments left the banks with huge amounts of resources to "give away" to any interested parties in the city.
Representing one of the largest civic associations in the country with its more than ten million fans, the club management of Galatasaray had no difficulty in taking loans from the banks. Although the exact amount is not confirmed by the former club administration, recent public announcements made by the current management and senior club members made it evident that the club borrowed no less than one hundred million dollars from the banks (Hurriyet June 2, 2003). As such, the team came close to losing its physical assets because of indebtedness. On the brink of declaring bankruptcy only a couple of years later, the club management decided that a partial solution to financial deadlock could be expanding membership base by "auctioning" each new seat at the rate of ten thousand dollars in order to raise revenue for the club (Hurriyet April 15, 2003).
Meanwhile, one of the conglomerates in the country, the Uzan group, whose empire of wealth ranged from involvement in energy business to a large share in the mobile telephone operators' market, sponsored the team with t-shirt and stadium ads, pouring huge amounts of money into the game compared with that of previous years. In fact, this was a strategy of Cem Uzan, the leading figure of the family to gain public influence on the back of the team. The next step would be to capitalize his economic power with social capital through Galatasaray so that he could run a successful political campaign for the national elections.4 Ironically, this was an excellent blueprint of the rise of Silvio Berlusconi to the premiership in Italy where his media empire along with the ownership of an important soccer club (AC Milan) guaranteed him the political victory both in 1994 and 2001 through his popularity.
At the background of all this, it became clear that an amateur sport club getting involved in serious business deals could only be run by the type of people whose logic and experience were compatible with financial matters. Hence, businessmen got full control over the club administration of Galatasaray, turning a sports organization into a business club. The "sale" of club administration to the business elite completed the link of the club with financial networks: while there was available money through banks and other means in the city, there were cadres ideologically ready to "exploit" them. In other words, located in a global city, Galatasaray benefited from financial flows, sponsorship deals and business acumen to support its European adventure, while the rest of the teams situated elsewhere in the country were forced to make ends meet with limited financial resources.
Social Polarization
The other important factor that triggered team's European success was social polarization and exclusion in the city. John Friedmann in his provocative and path-breaking article summarized the patterns of social polarization that emerge in global-cities (Friedmann). First, these places produce a dichotomized labor force: while there are professionals specialized in control functions, "a vast army of low-skilled workers engaged in manufacturing, personal services, and entertainment industries" exist at the other end of the spectrum. Poor inner city ghettos, suburban squatter housing, ethnic working-class enclaves are also part of the same process. To complicate the story in semiperipheral countries, a large informal sector comes into being with the influx of unskilled workers from rural areas and abroad.
Subsequently, regional inequalities increase between the global city and the rest of the country. Disconnected from its setting, global cities produce improved services and opportunities to its wealthy residents. While health, education and communication services are increasingly privatized and catered for the rich in the city, the rest of the country has to live with worsened facilities due to the end of nationalist developmentalist regimes in the periphery and the destruction of Keynesian state in core spaces (Held and McGrew 5).
Both developments summarized above pinpoint a two-level social polarization in the typology of a global city. While the income gap between the globally connected business elites and the low-skilled workers highlight class polarization in the city, the rising disparity between the global city and other regions refer to spatial inequalities. Likewise, Istanbul is not immune from social polarization. The dividing line is between those who are connected to global material flows and those who are not. Income differences, residential segregation, and consumption patterns are the ways in which this big difference between the "winners" and "losers" of the city can be identified in concrete terms (Aksoy and Robins, Civilization).
Accordingly, income distribution worsened in the city as incomes drawn from interest, rent and profits surpassed the share of wages and salaries dramatically in an export-oriented and free-trade economy (Waterbury 58). While the low-skilled workers, unemployed, people doing casual work (the "new poor") stay on the lower end of the scale, the workforce connected to the global economy at the top positions made large gains (Bugra and Keyder 6-7). Similarly, the spatial division of the city with reference to material wealth sharpened drastically. The tradition of rich and poor living side by side, which dates back to Ottoman-Muslim city heritage, is no more valid (Behar 4). With rising demand to land and residential areas, a new urban hierarchy emerged in Istanbul.
In this new urban context, old quarters at the downtowns of the city as well as new squatter areas are populated by the poor and the ethnically homogeneous populations. The old squatter areas which were designed to respond to the needs of Turkish industrialization during the 1960s and 1970s are upgraded and turned into neighborhoods with new apartments and shopping stores that produce a "generous rent" to its owners as their proximity to the city centers made them favorite locations for the salaried groups and small business ventures. At the top of the urban hierarchy stay the suburban sites, the ideal home for the rich, where all sorts of services are provided within that physical setting, making the new urban formation in Istanbul more comparable to "gated communities" in other parts of the world (Keyder, Housing Market 153-54).
The spatial and class-based polarization in the city has strong reflections in the way that leisure is organized. Night bars, trendy cafes and cultural events are increasingly restricted to a minority of the city residents in economic terms. As Frantz puts it elegantly: "despite Turkey's worst economic crisis in modern times, Laila, a sprawling club on the Bosphorus, thrives as it caters to the hip and rich of Istanbul . . . yet for every shiny Porsche, there is an old man pushing a cart heavy with scraps gleaned from garbage bins" (Frantz A4). Similarly, sport, a leisure activity of the most popular kind, is kidnapped from its "common origins" and seized upon by the infiltrating logic of capital. Soccer stays at the center of this transformation as clubs, fans and athletes have recently acquired "market identities" and therefore turned into "products" to be bought and sold in the market (Walsh and Giulianotti).
The new strictly commercial and class-based attitude to leisure translated into the soccer field in the form of highly inflated admission prices to the games. For instance, ticket prices for games in the European Competition skyrocketed, surpassing the monthly paycheck of a minimum-wage worker. Likewise, Galatasaray sold its rights to broadcast its games to a pay-per-view television channel (Cine 5) whose owner operates as a key player in commercial Turkish media due to his strong presence at the national media market (Aksoy and Robins, Peripheral). Subsequently, while the doors of the stadium have been closed to millions of fans, the "live game" experience on television also turned into a luxury product catered for a privileged minority.
Meanwhile, the income secured from financial institutions and mass media allowed the team to buy internationally famous and skillful domestic players which in turn heavily contributed to its European success (UEFA and Super Cup) and its domestic league titles.5 This was especially the case with the former achievement since financial resources proved to be the key factor in "buying" talented players from the globalized sport labor market to create a competitive team at the European level (Maguire and Stead).
The European Path
Finally, as the profile of fans has changed in the stadium toward the economically powerful classes, the representation of the team and the game has been transformed similarly. Hence, stadium became an arena for voicing middle/upper class aspirations: that is to "reach" and to be part of Europe, which has been the political agenda of the national developmentalist regime in Turkey since the founding of the Republic in I923 (Zürcher 1-7). In other words, the European adventure of Galatasaray in 1999-2000 became an instrumental public ceremony for reaffirming the long march of Turkey toward "western civilization."
Historically speaking, having a noncolonial empire background and being located at the physical and cultural borders of Europe have influenced the preferences of the Turkish-state throughout history (Pamuk 130-36; Huntington 42-45). Wholesale westernization has been the main current in Turkish politics, social life, and economic relations (Keyder, State and Class 88-89). This ideological position has been consolidated in the motto of "reaching the level of civilized nations" as the ruling classes in Ottoman-Turkish lands strived to implement the westernized reforms sometimes at the expense of masses in the last two centuries.
Recently, this historical pro-European stand of the hegemonic classes resurfaced in the debates concerning Turkey's membership to European Union. Finally accepted as a candidate, the big cosmopolitan business of Istanbul united forces with the majority of the political elite to reform Turkey in every aspect from economic relations to social life (Williamson 10). As such, the president of Turkey arranged meetings with political parties to remind them that joining European Union is a "state policy." In fact, this political vision was a fine illustration of how Turkey even incorporated and "domesticated" the Islamic religious movements around its European ideal.
Within this ideologically charged political and social context, "playing in the European Competition" radically turned into a project of Europeanization. In the words of minister of Sport and Youth at the time, "the success of Galatasaray would be an important step in Turkey's accession to Europe (Radikal May 20, 2000)." Hence, the idea of first being equal to Europe and then beating them (which would sound familiar to any nationalist discourse in the Third world) mirrored the hegemony of the pro-western and urban upper classes in terms of political agenda and mobilized state and media support for the European adventure of Galatasaray.
Realizing the opportunities of legitimacy and political cash in the short term, the political elite showed its support to the team on every possible occasion: canceling the domestic games of Galatasaray before its European matches, being physically present in every game of Galatasaray in European venues, promising financial support for sport success, mobilizing Turkish embassies at Europe, and serving private planes are only a "sample of favors" from the state to improve the performance of the team on "European soil." The ultimate display of political support was when one third of all members of the Turkish parliament went to Copenhagen to watch the final game live on the stadium (Radikal May 18, 2000).
Similarly, the newly flourished private and commercial media acted in unison to assist the European campaign of the team. Live coverage of the games was so extensive at the day of the final game that every single national TV network was reporting from Copenhagen all day through where the game was held. On a different ground, prominent figures of the press discussed the political and economic consequences of the team's European success and showed Galatasaray as a modal example to the Turkish political elite for European agenda and to the economic elite as a world brand.6 Hence, the space allotted and the minutes spent to the European adventure of Galatasaray on the media was at least comparable to the coverage of capturing of Abdullah Ocalan who was the leader of Kurdish rebels who were fighting the Turkish state for twenty years (Kramer 37-54). Meanwhile, the club was able to reap off the benefits of the nationalist wave, which has been widespread in the public opinion (Bora).
Conclusion
Galatasaray reflected the spatial and social inequalities in the country and mobilized the people on the winning side: the club management, fans and their vision similarly reflected the imagination of the urban middle and upper class whose primary aim became to join the European Union since the 1990s. This ideologically motivated class perspective along the lines of pro-western nationalism coupled with rich financial resources that were available in Istanbul at the time made it possible for Galatasaray to be successful on the European arena, realizing the westernization agenda of a social group at least at the sport level.7
After winning the UEFA Cup in 2000, Galatasaray could not hold on to its glory. In fact, the larger framework that allowed the team to be successful on the European stage is largely responsible for its failure. First, important players were either sold or could not be kept in the team after 2000 due to deteriorating financial situation. Then, Turkey was hit very hard with an economic crisis in late 2000 and 2001, pushing the (Istanbul) banks to a very difficult situation which in turn meant no new financial resources for the club (Onis and Rubin). Once, the top soccer club of the world, Galatasaray is now a mediocre team with limited financial resources and huge amount of accumulated debts.8 When there is any conversation about international sport success in Turkey, people still wonder: is it possible at all for a Turkish team to repeat the European success of Galatasaray in the twenty-first century?
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Financial Gains One of the leading scholars in the global city debate, Saskia Sassen, summarized the role of global cities in the contemporary economic order: "they have become strategic places that concentrate command functions, global markets and production sites for the advanced corporate service industries" (Sassen 139-44). On a different ground, prominent figures of the press discussed the political and economic consequences of the team's European success and showed Galatasaray as a modal example to the Turkish political elite for European agenda and to the economic elite as a world brand.6 Hence, the space allotted and the minutes spent to the European adventure of Galatasaray on the media was at least comparable to the coverage of capturing of Abdullah Ocalan who was the leader of Kurdish rebels who were fighting the Turkish state for twenty years (Kramer 37-54).
Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Aug 2007 | NOTES | 1. Foreign direct investment to the city was limited. Looking to various factors to explain the economic rise of the city, Keyder calls the experience of Istanbul as "informal globalization" that stems from illegal flows such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and informal trade between the city and Russian Federation (see Keyder, The Setting). | 2. It is interesting to note that spectator sports "go against the current" where declining social capital and civic engagement are contemporary trends. Hence, this is why political figures and business elite want to have more influence on the game respectively for political (read election) and economic (read new markets) purposes. For an excellent discussion on social capital by a prominent political scientist in the US case (see Putnam). | 3. For the latest on the economic and political "adventure" of Uzan family, see BBC News. 14 Feb. 2004. Mar. 2004 ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/busincss/3488959.stm}. | 4. Chung Mong Joon, the head of the South Korean soccer federation and the heir of the industrial giant Hyundai, also decided to "cash" his popularity along with his economic power for the presidential position after successfully co-hosting the soccer World Cup of 2002 in which South Korea was only eliminated in the semifinals. For his political adventure (see Don Kirk A5). | 5. Galatasaray won four domestic league titles in a row (1996-2000) and two European championships (UEFA, Super Cup both in 2000). Along with keeping young and talented Turkish players in the squad, the team signed three relatively expansive but experienced foreign names before its UEFA Cup success. These were Hagi and Popescu (all time Romanian football heroes) along with Taffarel (the former goalkeeper of the Brazilian national team that won the World Cup in 1994). | 6. Taking Galatasaray soccer team "as an example for success abroad" is part of an attempt to forge a new Turkish identity in the last two decades based on principles of neo-liberal economics which privileges competitiveness, global orientation and "survival of the fittest" mentality as the necessary human traits. For this new wave of "pro-western nationalistic movement" in the Turkish case, see Tanil Bora. "Nationalist Discourses in Turkey." The South Atlantic Quarterly 102. 2/3 (2003): 433-51. Also, see the article by Trumper and Tomic that attempts to understand the neo-liberal identity making process in Chile through sport. Ricardo Trumper and Patricia Tomic. "Neoliberalism, Sport and the Chilean Jaguar." Race and Class 40.4 (1999)'• 45-63. | 7. Sport in the non-western world has always been strongly influenced by the relationship between the West and the local actors, mostly characterized by colonialism and/or underdevelopment. The hegemony of the West went hand in hand with the rising cultural resistance to it in the post-colonial era. Sport, in this context, provided one of the rare outlets/avenues to compete, challenge, and even to beat the developed world with its own weapon, which is not available to non-westerners at the realms of economy, politics and science. For an illuminating study, see Alan M. Klein. Sugarball-The American Game, the Dominican Dream. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1991. | 8. Once the top team in the world club rankings of International Federation of Football History and Statistics in January 2001, Galatasaray could not hold on to its position. The club was tanked 43rd and 32nd respectively in March 2003 and February 2004 as the team lost ground to other teams in its domestic league campaigns as well in European competitions. For the statistics, go to ( http://www.iffhs.de) Accessed on March 2004. |
Cem Emrence is a PhD Candidate at the department of sociology, SUNY-Binghamton. Interested in historical sociology as well as current debates on globalization, Emrence's current research is on the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century with a particular focus on state formation, economic incorporation and contentious politics. Among others, his articles appeared in Turkish Studies, New Perspectives on Turkey, and the Middle Eastern Studies. His latest book, 99 Days of Opposition: the Free Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Firkasi) was published by the Iletisim Publishing House in Istanbul in 2006. He recently taught classes on comparative empires and the modern Middle East at Syracuse University.